Marcos Numes I Future of Payments I Gnosis Pay I Pragma London 2024

[Music] welcome back everybody hopefully you uh had a good nice uh stretch and got some coffee and a cool break we're at the last half of or last third of pragma today we got a few more talks to go and after that we'll kind of wrap up and get to talk with each other and hang out so let's let's get the show started next up is our interview with Marcos Marcos is the co-founder of nosis pay and you kind of already saw a sneak peek uh when we were interviewing Lucas on what the nois p c is but we're going to talk about a lot more on what the actual Vision here is and the possibilities of nosis pay so to have this chat with me I want to bring on Marcus on stage and uh please give him a big round of [Applause] applause thank you hello sorry there we go hi thank you K thank you for having me here I'm excited to have you here I think this is a a cool part of this because one of the things that we as eth Global have been working on is getting people to show what the potential is of using crypto in real life and uh there's a lot of years where nothing has happened and then suddenly everything started happening and and this this is a perfect example of one of those cases of us blending in the real world with Crypt native world so the the thing I want to start off with is just maybe having you talk about what is iosis pay and and how do you yourself Define it yeah thanks um so noses spay is the first decentralized checkings account available for self- custodian um well holders and where you can actually spend your uh stables in any point of sale that accepts Visa all over the world I mean that's an awesome sentence so it's it's a decentralized checkings account but then it works with visa and somehow these two things are talking to each other so so let's uh let's dig into that yeah um what happens when I tap my Visa card at a payment terminal yeah so first of all when you actually get your noses card um or your noses pay card um it's connected to an i Ben uh where you can basically go from Fiat to Euro East in Europe or GBP in uh in the UK and once you make that deposit you then have your digital assets sitting in your blockchain address well then you go to any regular Merchant out there that accepts Visa sign that blockchain transaction in the point of sale with your pin code 234 and then you get an authorization request that hits our processing engine and then we basically verify in your blockchain address if you hold the amount of uh stables for that transaction and if you do then you are then transferring this digital assets into a pre-settlement account which is under the custodia of the issuer uh which is a regulated institution and then this issue is going to keep it until you basically have the clearing from Visa that this transaction went through so that said in the eyes of the merchant in the eyes of Visa uh it's pretty much or even in the eyes of actually the issuer bank it's Fiat because he's holding for a momentum this digital asset but once it's get the clearin then it's uh offed by the stable into a regular Fiat account for settlement uh in the transaction this is uh absolutely mind-blowing to me so let's so I I have a couple questions so is any party here taking a risk on the volatility of any of these assets let's start with that question um not necessarily unless we say that Stables are not that stable so so it's only working on stable so you create a a safe you deposit some some stable coins whether it's Euro or egbp or usdc in the future I assume and then now the bank which is your and I take it that's the same bank that is issuing the iban number that is effectively debiting the amount it's almost like that but um let's say it like this um the issue that allows you to have a card which in this case is Visa is that correct or no well no there's someone in in that plays this role today is called motivate um but effectively what they do is they allow any one let's say any institution that wants to issue a card you need to go through someone that is regulated and why is that because you have to basically comply with the country that you want to issue against or the countries that you want to cover uh and then this issue needs to have the license to provide the service so once you issue that card or once this this this party issues the card effectively you have something called the processor which is the one the engine that is actually running the authorization requests response the clearing the settlement all the the technology connections with the schemes and and any payment player so the effect the the nobody really touches the money what what happens is the user once he signed that blockchain transaction in the point of sale he's effectively saying I recognize this value and I'm okay that this value then goes to thise presettlement for the period that the transaction is cleared which means he is effectively sending this uh digital assets without having to do any double confirmations or any opening apps or anything so we we wanted to create an experience where it's actually possibly adopted by billions of people which is just a card it's a card has a p c everybody knows how it works everybody knows how it works nobody knows how actually a card works today right you don't know how your bank card works today in fact there's at least 10 players between you and the merchant helping you to use that card your regular card so we're basically taking a role in one of that places in fact to ensure that in the future you don't need all those players but allowing this to happen over time that's awesome um so you've been working on this thing for a bit over a year now y um correct how has this this kind of Journey been so far like I know it's out recently um are any stats you can share how do you measure kind of the excitement so far yeah um so actually we started um uh about a year ago um with NOS pay um where basically I I I met Stefan two years ago uh when I was still uh well managing a very large fch in Europe called soe um and then we decided to do a joint venture between both companies and then in in June last year approximately we kind of uh uh spin-off um funny enough being connected that uh in in in the crypto Community or the blockchain community the open source and collaboration is amazing right I mean developing any very complex Tech it feels like yeah it's uh you know cleaning a little uh desk in in in in a dust environment um the most complex part was a fact uh getting The Regulators to agree getting the banks to give us a bank account get getting our policies to be reviewed without the word crypto because once they have crypto then it's blocked um so even though we had the exact language to get things done they they they yeah it was it was very diff the usual yeah I mean it was not usual to me so I was always very surprised like how can you guys actually say and then I would always give parallel comments on the traditional industry and that's how actually we managed a lot of things to go through like but if you allow this in in the regular why not in blockchain um so effectively we're only out for a couple of weeks maybe four I think holders are still getting their first uh cards we only allow the first 2,000 cards to test uh if this is really not going to give us anything uh that we haven't foreseen um so far we have been transacting in over 40 countries uh I I was in Denver uh last week or the week before I don't recall anymore uh me neither yeah all on chain paid literally everything from my Uber from my uh inflight see on your safe that these are the the amounts that have been that's awesome so I had the best FX because we uh had a very good deal with Visa so even revolute does not have the same effects as we H today so you're using your Euro card in the US I tried with American Express was a disaster uh I tried with my barklay car which was I thought it was always good but it was a bit of a disaster and then my monzo and then revolute and then ours all at the same time in the same second like trying to to make just to see it if it actually we are making a difference so in fact it's not only about about being the first decentralized checkings account in we have actually a business case that uh is sustainable it generates uh uh Revenue back into uh a business business uh it's about having a good offer to the market it's about uh any web three out there that wants to have a card uh connected to to to their wallet basically enabling the same thing and making revenue on top of it so yeah it was uh it's I would say sorry you ask about the numbers I deviated a little bit but 2,000 cards we uh uh passed uh 150k volumes uh I think all those data are I mean it's on chain right so I actually encourage people to go and check it and post it on Twitter the different angles of the data because it's uh it's quite uh quite interesting so far that's actually really cool I mean 150k in just the last few weeks that's uh that's also like a lot of excitement of people trying to spend money um what was it like working with visa and just bank issuers and you obviously talked about that them kind of backing away when when you say crypto and uh and not being super open in in those worlds but you clearly managed to pull through how how did that happen so Visa was some it was extremely interesting because um we when we did the the transaction in Paris F first production transaction we didn't know that we actually needed uh a little approval from Visa uh on on on on the digital asset because we felt like well we don't touch the digital to asset so we don't need it but um from that moment they kind of came to us like well you need an approval it's like you cannot do those things but the way they flip it around it was just amazing like uh actually what you guys did and what you're doing in fact can bring cost reduction to the network so I really want to work with you they have basically been extremely proactive they have been uh rebuilding policies to allow us to operate globally I mean all kudos to visa and I actually encourage every project here that's interested in in in the schemes always knock Visa door first um and I say that as a happy customer amazing um well you kind of start off by saying that what you want to be is a is a decentralized bank account for for everybody and that's a pretty widenet sort of vision for where you want to be and the thing I'm kind of curious about is seems like everything that you're taking out with nosis pay seems to touch up the decentralized world the the regulatory side and then also just the real world in kind of it's all's capacity and just like when we have a notion of borders is that how you kind of think about the the goals of like what do you need to blend or what's kind of the overall way you make decisions um I mean noses pay right so if you look at noses and the history of noses and the amount of great Martin Stephan freder uh has brought to the community I mean we just heard Lucas um just moments ago from safe I mean zodiac cow swap uh chain just amazing and and and the common element uh in in the DNA it's about long-term structure secure um you have this world where they were very good at helping us cracking the bridging side so the three worlds that you're kind of mentioning so you you have the l1's and l2s or the decentralized talking to Fiat and then you have well the real world economy and then you actually have the border right I mean countries jurisdictions you have to follow the rules you you have to follow the UK rules the because of brexit even though they were built on top of sepa and and there's tons of crazy right elements to this so building those bridges in the technology sign fine orchestrating all the businesses that we need to orchestrate in order to make this work that was a lot uh a lot more tough um so I guess um we should somehow uh uh um ensure that in order for any wallet or project out there that is interested in connecting to this World they should be abstracted away from jurisdictions and and problems and focus on what they're good at money is changing the way um uh well banks are offering to Consumers right so they they are basically platforms providing access to those treasury uh uh uh Solutions and we basically are just plugging in that last mile that helps you to behave just like a bank well that's super interesting so um you've kind of talked about being a decentralized bank you've kind of talked about just launching the the cards with the early first kind of users if it's not just a card like what other ways do you kind of feel like you'll be interfacing with um as a user um the the way I look at is um what what is my relationship with my bank I basically have my account I basically want to transfer fund in and out of that account with a card remittance uh which is basically in my country or outside my country um and that's pretty much it and and if I of course have savings then I want to invest and if I need credit then I want to borrow um I think web 3 already cracked a bunch of the credits and the uh uh yield returns and all this this elements the part which is still still a bit loose is effectively this off ramp where until now you had tons of additional fees because they kind of try to ignore the world as is and they just add a fee element and yeah I guess maybe just to confirm these fees from what you're saying exist because that's how they just want to make money but there is I not really that big of an overhead in actually doing the offramp is that correct I I think because they have not entered the web to to kind of of resolve or to take a roll inside of the web two they kind of wrap the web two and say how much does it cost X so then X plus uh margin is what I need to charge then to play this game and just leave it uh I think it was good until now but uh we saw tons of initiatives like crypto.com and others um but but I think it was not really uh helping to create that banking feeling and and now with this solution if you choose your tribe if it's your tribe is metamask coinbase I mean you name it if it's centralized decentralized it doesn't matter what matters is that the funds can go from that account all the way to the point of sale in the most effective in in in the most uh simple way um just by tapping and or or by spending so um I think there's still little things that we need to bring it out to make it exactly like a bank but after you go through the kyc it's yeah the same and and you want that exactly so you're saying that we're going to do it no matter what that's the that's the basically the infrastructure that we're going to invest and spend time and effort every single day of Our Lives awesome so I guess maybe in conclusion then uh the first 2,000 people got to see their cards or still about to receive them and we're still only in March so what does the rest of the year look like and uh and are there any new interesting either products or improvements or features that we're going to expect and uh and also just I guess where where is it available right now what countries and and kind of how do you think about geographic expansions so we're now UK Europe plus Switzerland and if you were any of those places you can get a card um I am excited to say that we started an operation in Brazil we hired uh well actually we have a new partner sitting there that is going to evolve Americas and Brazil at the same time I expect more geographies uh before the end of the year at least eight uh that we're going to be able to issue the card uh I expect you guys to have your Apple pay Google pay because well it shouldn't be about a card physical uh but just the card behavior um and I think other things that uh will will enable payments as people are used to yesterday will we uh given okay for e-commerce so it doubled the amount of transactions in 24 hours so I think it's uh it's it's very interesting yeah we need to cover every single use case and make sure that uh yeah you guys can can feel it's nothing different than what is used to Super exciting I mean I think this is going to be a good year for nois pay and if you're I guess interested in basically using your multi or just your wallets as real world card debit accounts we're finally there I mean took us a few years my invitation now pure public pressure uh making sure that usdc gets natively in noses we're almost there but I mean more pressure the better um today we actually announced that we we we we Bridge the Euro uh in two weeks time we're going to have the bridging of uh uh um usdc Native from from from from uh Circle but definitely being natively there it will be a huge difference congrat the more staes please join and the more wallets please join the more we can do together the better well hopefully uh when it comes to the the US audience as well so I can get mine but uh this has been super exciting and congratulations for for this amazing accomplishment thank you thank you thank you for your time thank you for courage